The Duchess War (Brothers Sinister 1)

There was almost nothing left on her board. Still, she drew out her spectacles, donned them, and studied it.

“There is a point in almost every game,” her father had once said, “when a win is inevitable. When your every move forces your opponent to react, and by reacting, to dig his own grave.”

How strange. She could no longer recall what he looked like, but she could see the board precisely as it had been laid out at that moment. She brushed pieces off her board, leaving only the ones that had been there at the time. Her bishop and knight, holding down his rook; her queen arrayed against two pawns that served as his only fragile protection against her offense.

“Have we reached that point yet?” he asked her. “Plan it out. Always know the path ahead.”

She’d stared at the board, squinting—and then she’d seen it for the first time. She could force those protecting pawns away. They’d be picked off by knight and queen until her rook swept in and hammered the king against the anvil of her bishop.

“Yes,” she’d said in wonder. “We’re there.”

“Then on the next move, when you pick up your piece—give it a kiss. Like that, love.”

She reached for her bishop. In her memory, the piece was large, her hands chubby. She couldn’t have been much older than six at the time.

“Why?” she’d asked.

“Lane family tradition.” Her father smiled. “When you’ve backed the other fellow into a corner, you give him a kiss to show there’s no hard feelings.”

After that, whenever they’d played—when one of them came close to a checkmate—he’d laughed and said there was a kiss just around the corner. She wanted to remember her father like that—warm and smiling, instructing her in everything he knew. Laughing, saying that she was the center of his existence. She had to remember her father like that, because the alternative was to think of him as he’d been at the end.

Look up? Her father hadn’t just told her to look up. He’d taught her to fly. And then, when she’d reached the top of the world, he’d ripped her from the sky.

Chapter Eight

IN THE END, IT TOOK DAYS for Robert to bring Sebastian in—in large part because Violet, the newly widowed Countess of Cambury, insisted on coming along.

“First,” Violet had said, spearing Robert with her gaze, “I am tired of sitting on an estate in Cambridgeshire with nothing to do. Second, you’ll need someone to keep Sebastian on a leash.” She’d nodded at Sebastian, who had attempted to look innocent.

There had been some truth to that. Violet could get Sebastian to behave—nominally—when she wished. Violet was two years older than Robert and Sebastian. She’d grown up on the estate next door to Sebastian’s, and until Violet had been deemed too old to play with boys, she’d accompanied them during the summers.

But Robert had far more memories of Violet tweaking Sebastian and sending him climbing trees for hawks’ eggs in a fit of rage, than he did of Violet getting Sebastian to behave.

“Finally,” Violet said, “your mother actually likes me, and if we wish to distract her, a two-pronged approach will work best. Sebastian can drive her off, and I’ll lure her away from you.”

But it had been Sebastian who provided the final impetus, after Violet had disappeared that first evening. “Look,” he’d told Robert, “she’s in mourning for a man she hated. Give her a chance to get out.”

So Robert had relented—and thus brought upon himself an entourage of servants and maids and dressers, of messages sent to reserve rooms in a hotel, as Violet could not stay in Robert’s bachelor establishment. It was more than forty-eight hours before Robert found himself, his cousin, the Countess of Cambury, nine separate servants, two cats, and one owl on the platform at Euston Square in London.

The servants were engaged in wrestling the luggage into the proper compartment, and Robert took the time to walk with his cousin. There was a bit of a breeze, enough to keep the air along the platform crisp and pleasant. The tang of burning tobacco—that was Robert’s excuse for not sitting in the station proper alongside Violet—made an acrid counterpoint to the smell of autumn leaves.

He walked beside his cousin, and all his myriad worries seemed to grow smaller.

“So,” he said to Sebastian, “they’re actually taking steps to make some sort of position for you at Cambridge. Given what they said of you when you were a student there, I would imagine that was the last thing you’d expect. Are you dying of shock yet?”

Sebastian gave him a long look. “I’m not a student any longer, you know.”

“Don’t pretend you’ve grown up.”

That got him an impish smile. “Wait until I turn it down,” his cousin said. “That will shock everyone.”

Robert blinked and looked at the man more closely. Sebastian was a known prankster, but he took the work he did now very seriously. “You’re going to turn it down?”

“I’m afraid I have to.” Sebastian put his hands in his pockets. “Even Newton had to get a dispensation from Charles II because he didn’t believe in the Trinity. Oxford has become more liberal, but Cambridge…” He shrugged. “Still the Dark Ages there. They insist on adherence to Church of England doctrine. Half the natural scientists want me because they think I’m doing interesting work. The other half believe that appointing me a Fellow will force me to shut up.”

“Would it?” Robert glanced at him. “I’ve never known you to shut up, not about anything. And are you an unbeliever? I’ve read all your papers, even the ones that are well over my head, and I don’t recall you taking a position.”

Sebastian shrugged. “Haven’t you heard? I’m a godless scientist, an apostate follower of Darwin.”

“Even Mr. Darwin isn’t an unbeliever.”

Sebastian didn’t answer the question. Instead he gave a resigned shrug. “I not only think that the species evolved, I can prove that characteristics are transmitted from parent to offspring in a dependable, scientific manner. Not by the grace of any divine being. By the operation of simple, natural principles.” He gave Robert a look. “That makes me an unbeliever in half of society’s eyes. Who am I to argue with them?”

“I take it that’s a rhetorical question, as you argue with them at every opportunity.”

Sebastian smiled in pleasure and shook his head.